


cut me up, set me free, that is what you do to me

by shledzguohn



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, Sexual Content, otbird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shledzguohn/pseuds/shledzguohn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gods, he prayed that when he submitted the request for release of a prisoner into his custody, not a soul in the justice minister's office imagined that it would be for <i>this</i>.</p><p>Warning for sexual content, S/M content.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cut me up, set me free, that is what you do to me

**Author's Note:**

> hmmmm forks this over to its own work because sure
> 
> if you read 'musings of a clover' (which is the only thing i ever do anymore cause what is attention span), you'll know that i sometimes send ask- and submitbox fics to verne. this is sort of a collection of a combination of those things, a loosely-linked story without transitions because attention span. the setting is after this one fic of his (see 'inspired'), something of a spiritual successor (~laughs~). 'repressed-memories trick', in which it's end-game timeline but the people who weren't part of the trick to go back start remembering the canon timeline too.
> 
> i described it to verne from the beginning as: "in which cabs begins to remember the alternate timeline; what he’s gained (his best friends, his partner, a better reputation) … and what he’s lost (his fierce conviction, his nemesis, his foil). and while he’d never ever think of trading one for the other… he misses the fight. the thrill of the chase. but now he sees his feared and confident Manipulator, the one who he’d practically put on a pedestal in his mind, the game he’d been hunting for so long … locked up behind bars. and it pisses him off. he wants yomiel to go back and be that person again, to punch him in the nose, break his legs so he can laugh in his face and say 'thaaat’s the spirit, baby.'
> 
> "alas all yomiel wants is to atone for and stay far away from that part of his unpast. doing that to cabs would be oh so satisfying and oh so harmful, like giving a drink to an alcoholic sober ten years. alas alack alas."
> 
> title: ingrid michaelson - fire

He stared coldly at the man. The man he had once called the Manipulator, the man he had devoted years of his life to personally hunting down. The man who had spent the last ten years placidly cooped up behind bars, his passionate red suit transformed to a meek pink smock. Now Cabanela was the one with the gun and the power, and the man he had considered his rival was this calm ambitionless _idiot_ , and Cabanela held two thoughts at the same time: _'this is justice'_ and _'this isn't right'_.

“What do you want from me?” His voice wavers, with such a sincere lilt on the word _want_ that it makes Cabanela sick. Reminds him of the boy he was in that interrogation room ten years ago, not the man who shot himself and blew him up and laughed at his pain. “Haven’t I already done enough to pay for my crime?”

The blond licks his lips nervously. “Listen, Inspector, I like to think that I’ve changed since then. Repented, seen the light, all that jazz. And now you’re here asking me to be that person I was t— … ten years ago. Is that it? You _want_ me to start hurting people again?”

Cabanela stands there for a long second just watching him, reading how his tone and expression and body language are all saying that he’s telling the honest-to-gods truth. The man had always been like that, as far as he can remember and piece together. The Manipulator, Cabanela had titled him (because it’s far easier to kill a thing when you can name it, identify it), but only on the physical realm. When he said something…

_Detective, I’m telling ya! I don’t know anything about it!  
The source of my power is not of this world.  
If you hadn’t done what you did… I never would’ve pointed a gun at that kid._

… he meant it.

“No,” Cabanela says, and that’s the truth too. If he had the slightest inclination that the man was willing to act at all the way he had … before, then he would never release him from his prison, never put him back into the public where he could wreak the kind of horror that took lives and ripped apart families. But at the same time… Cabanela knew the man in front of him was so changed, he would never act that way again.

And that was the problem.

“No,” he says again. “Not ‘people’. Not anyone else. … Just me.”

It's like training a rescue rottweiler, Cabanela thinks, though he's sure the man wouldn't appreciate the comparison. At first he's resistant, scared of the situation and the inspector and most of all himself. As they progress he starts to let himself go, but it's too much too fast and too few boundaries, and Cabanela has to stop him before any real damage is done. The man has two settings, off and on, but teaching Yomiel to hurt him is more rewarding than a hundred tough cases.

The man is so good, _so_ good, yes all right maybe still a little awkward and nervous even now that they’re here in the heat of the moment, but Cabanela has been wanting this for long enough that his memory is filling in the cracks and dents in what-is with his personal what-should-be.

He almost doesn’t want to distract him from whatever magic he’s working down there, _gods_ is he good, but so far it’s been entirely too sweet and tender for what he needs from _him_ specifically. “Try,” he breathes out huskily, “t-try pressing your thumbs against my neck.” (They’ve already learned it’s a bit soon for truly in-character double-talk, that it’s more awkward than sexy. Maybe later, later.)

Yomiel stops, his hand pressed against Cabanela’s leg and his lips brushing the sweaty small of his back. “… I can’t.”

And oh, the inspector is all about trusting his partners’ “no”s, backing off when they refuse, especially ( _Detective, I’m tellin’ ya! I didn’t do it!_ ) especially now that he _remembers_ , especially with this man, especially. But with their closeness, Cabanela felt the shuddering breath from the man’s nose as his mind pictured the scene, and he thinks  _I can’t_ is not necessarily _I won’t_.

“It’s fine, baby,” the word falls out half automatically and half goading him toward annoyance, “I’m askin’ you to do it; if you’re worried about hurting me—”

“No,” he says (interrupting his ‘don’t be’), then “yes,” then the man’s hand clenches roughly against his thigh and he hears him swallow. “Look, I told you, I’m — I _can’t_.” The blond kneel-sits in the middle of the bed, facing the adjacent wall, ambient light revealing how his gaze rests everywhere but Cabanela’s face. Still hiding his eyes, with all the rest of him to bare. “It’s the memories. I… For you, it’s so different. Having just five years changed, having all of them come back recently. I can only imagine.”

He shakes his head slightly, with an emotion Cabanela can’t place, a sort of wistful disappointment. “But I’ve had ten years to live with what I’ve done.” There’s meaning found between the lines of every word. “There was once a part of me who wanted to hurt you, definitely, who wanted to _kill_ you—”

His eyes squeeze shut tight. Hiding them, with all the rest of him to bear. “But that’s just not who I am any more. And I won’t let it be.” Another swallow. “I can’t hurt you, Cabanela. I’m sorry.”

The air hangs thick and heavy with his confession, his oath. Cabanela can feel the pressure shift onto him to say the right thing, to encourage him that he’s not that person, to do something to comfort this man in front of him who has been through so much.

He leans towards him, laying one hand on his shoulder gently, reassuringly. Closer and closer still until his lips nearly meet the helix of his ear. In a low, matter-of-fact tone, he whispers,

“Because of what I did, because of _me_ — your fiancée killed herself.”

It wasn’t the most spotlessly white thing he could have done, Cabanela reflects as his shoulders slam back into the mattress, thin knuckles curled across arteries and palms digging into his clavicle. But gods, there’s finally a fire in the man’s eyes above him, and the surprised gasp that falls out of his mouth sounds a little bit like _“thanks.”_


End file.
